Local Taxidermists Practice Art, Science And Making Mementos – InkFreeNews.com

ELKHART COUNTY — Taxidermy has come a long way since the days of mummifying animals in ancient Egypt and stuffing hides with rags and sawdust in Victorian England.
“It’s 100% an art. I always tell people this, taxidermy is practiced by many but mastered by few,” said Arlen Lehman, owner of Turkey Creek Taxidermy. He taught himself the trade and has operated just outside Milford for 28 years.
In taxidermy, an animal’s hide is removed, tanned and attached to a form with hide paste, the eyes replaced with glass replicas. According to Lehman, the tools of the trade have improved over time.
“I’ve got old mounts in where they didn’t have forms. They used plaster, like what you used to make a cast with,” he said.
His showroom features typical deer mounts and a variety of other wildlife, ranging from elk to otters to starlings – even impalas and wildebeest from African hunting expeditions.
In many cases, taxidermists will outsource the hides to a tannery before mounting. Lehman uses the services of Christy Borkholder, who owns Weldy Hill Fur & Hide Tanning in Nappanee. Borkholder has been tanning professionally since 2004, and while much of his work is for taxidermy mounts, there are some unexpected reasons to keep a fur forever.
“We do cowhides. A lot of that is 4-H kids with their steers, they might want to keep the hides for remembrance. … Somebody’s last cow or his first one. There’s something special about it,” he said.
There are some who wish to have pets taxidermied, Lehman said – he has even mounted a pet monkey – but most owners are prohibited by the cost. There aren’t many standardized forms for cats and dogs available on the market.
Beyond living room walls, taxidermy also appears in museums and nature centers for educational purposes. Lehman has done work for Elkhart County Parks, and when a snow leopard died at a sanctuary in Southern Indiana, the animal was given to him to be preserved. The rare leopard – something most people would never lay eyes on – can now be seen in its mounted form.
Taxidermy requires precise measurements to get the placement of the hide exactly right, but in some ways, it is more art than science. Borkholder said he is always experimenting with different mixtures of salt and acid to better preserve hides. After soaking long enough at the right level of acidity, the hide is meant to last indefinitely.
For Lehman, the artistic aspect of taxidermy is what he enjoys most.
“To me, if a taxidermist isn’t artistic, if you don’t understand colors and you don’t understand the anatomy of the animal from the inside, then your end result’s going to show it. It’s like being a painter. You can either paint a good picture, or you go, ‘Oops.’”
Tim Hochstetler of Nappanee runs Custom European Mounting. These mounts include the bare skull of an animal, sometimes hydrodipped with different designs like camo or forest patterns.
A lifelong hunter, taxidermy has become something sentimental for Hochstetler, especially now that he has children of his own. Recently, his 11-year-old son, Galen, hunted his first deer and Hochstetler prepared the skull for the family to keep.
“It’s not that it’s a monster of a trophy, but to me it’s the experience with the kids – get them out in the field and be with them when they shoot their first trophy. It’s to preserve that, to have something to remember,” he said.
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